Top 4 bizarre stories to kick off 2014

Top 4 bizarre stories to kick off 2014

As you go marching back to the daily grind, take some refuge in these bizarre news stories that surfaced over the festive period.

Top 4 bizarre stories to kick off 2014

There’s nothing better than a bit of wacky news to make the transition from beach chair to desk chair that much more bearable.

While we have been feasting, celebrating and lounging about over the last few weeks, many of us have tuned out. Sure ,we have stayed abreast of all the major stories and international happenings, but those quirkier and seemingly trivial headlines that seem almost impossible to be true may have escaped our notice.

Until now.

Here are a few of our favourites, guaranteed to make your week and entertain colleagues and workmates as you settle in for another year.

British actress Kate Winslet gave birth to her third child on December 7 2013. While the news seems straightforward enough, the Oscar winner has come under intense media scrutiny for her choice of name. The bouncing baby boy will be known as Bear, confirmed a spokesperson for Winslet and her new husband Ned Rocknroll. Yes, that’s right – the businessman changed his surname from Abel Smith by deedpoll. Thankfully, the bouncing bundle of joy will be taking Winslet’s surname, the 38 year-old actress confirmed in an interview for Glamour magazine: “Of course we’re not going to call it Rocknroll. People might judge all they like, but I’m a f****** grown-up.”

Vogue’s US editor-in-chief Anna Wintour threw out her family’s Christmas tree before Christmas Day, claiming it looked “too messy”. It seems the fashion icon is every bit as demanding as her depiction in the ‘fictional’ story of The Devil Wears Prada. An instagram post by Wintour’s daughter, featured the family’s Christmas presents piled against a wall – hardly what we would call “getting in to the festive spirit”.

Remember the news headlines announcing that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un had his uncle and second in command executed on charges of treason and corruption late last year? Well, rumours have surfaced about the exact nature of the 67-year-old’s untimely end. A variety of international news agencies are claiming that Jang Song Thaek and his five closest aides were stripped naked and thrown into a cage with over a 100 ravenous dogs. Having been reportedly starved for days, it’s not hard to piece together the remaining pieces of the puzzle in this story.

A UK surgeon allegedly branded his initials onto a patient’s liver during transplant surgery. Simon Bramhall, 48, who has worked in Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital for more than a decade, was suspended pending an investigation after a colleague spotted the letters ‘S ‘ and ‘B’ on the patient’s organ during routine surgery. Hospital administrators fear that the unnamed patient may not have been the first to have been imprinted, with hundreds of other transplant recipients having possibly suffered the same fate. “It could have happened hundreds of times, who knows? It was just luck that this incident was brought to light,” an insider told reporters. Experts say the burns are “superficial” and would not usually be harmful.